TransAtlantic
by Azpidistra
Summary: A one-shot story only, set in my 'Phobia' universe. A trans-Atlantic flight has always been his thinking ground.


Author's Note: In the writing of 'Isolophobia' several questions came up about Samuel Clarke. Some were my own; some were from those who read the story. I hope this answers some of the questions as to which he is, and what makes him tick. No set timeframe, but would probably take place on his return flight to Paris (after 'Isolophobia', but before 'Oneirophobia.')  
  
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Originally, his father's family was French and his mother's family was Vietnamese, but somewhere the lines had crossed, and the edges had blurred. His grandparents had first met in nineteen fifty-one, in the early years of the French occupations of Vietnam. His grandmother's family was plantation owners, having harvested and sold opium for decades. He was a French soldier, there to keep the peace, to prevent a war that was inevitable. They had first met when he accompanied two soldier buddies to an underground drug lair, in the hopes to buy some opium, and to find some Vietnamese women to satisfy the female craving they had had for months -they blamed the exoticness of the Asian landscape. She was there to help her brothers deliver a new shipment, having been sent in hopes she would catch the eye of the owner, thus securing an engagement, a good match for her, a good business arrangement for her father. Instead, she caught the briefest gaze of the French soldier from across the room, as he stood apart from his two friends. She was barely sixteen; he was almost twenty-seven.  
  
They did not meet again until almost four months later. He was one again accompanying his same two buddies to the same underground drug lair, and she was there too, this time not accompanying her brothers, but there to help her husband. Seeing him across the room, she stole a brief moment, begging him to take her with him when he returned for France. In his French-accented, broken Vietnamese, he explained to her that he would not be returning to France, that he had no France to return to, that France was the land of his dreams, and that his dreams were shattered. She swore she would follow him to wherever he led. He agreed.  
  
Eighteen months later, he left Vietnam, with one person more than he arrived with. He smuggled her first across the border into Cambodia, from there taking a neutral ship (arranged through a superior officer, who owed him a favor) to Egypt. It was from there, that they boarded a plane bound for London. Again, in his French-accented broken Vietnamese, he assured her, she would be safe, that they both would be, but still she was wary. Thankful, grateful, but wary.  
  
They remained in England for forty-seven years. She had left her two sons in Vietnam (ages sixteen months and three months), for fear had she brought them, it would have put her in danger. It was a hard decision, but she needed to sacrifice their lives for hers. It hurt all the same.  
  
It was three years after their arrival on British soil that they were married. She was twenty-one, or nearly so, he was almost thirty-two. Together, they had four children, six years between the oldest and the youngest. He studied to be a lawyer; she received her degree in education, eventually finding a job as a teacher, and they anglicized their surname to 'Clarke,' in hopes to defer anyone from her family possibly looking for them. The two sons she left behind in Vietnam, was a topic of the unmentionable. It was only when their children emigrated for the United States in search of jobs, or education, or adventure, that they decided to follow, in hopes to be close to both their children and their grandchildren.  
  
He was the second (and last) child of the oldest, a product of the French- Vietnamese of his father, and the pure British blood of his mother -Scottish, to be exact. He had the black hair and the coloring of his Asian ancestry, but the blue-gray eyes, sharp as steel, cold as ice, of his European blood. He was called Samuel Jeremy Clarke, (Samuel for his maternal grandfather, Jeremy because his father thought it to be a good, strong name).  
  
He studied at the best boarding schools in the country, graduated high school when he was only was sixteen, completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard, accepted early decision to Yale law school. There he studied, dated some women when he had, applied and having graduated, received an internship with the lawyer, Mariah Jacobson. A woman of fair, moral judgments, she was arguably the best defense attorney in the greater Metropolitan New York area, perhaps New York State, perhaps the Northeast. He was adopted under her wings, often invited into her Westchester County home for dinner or for holidays. When her youngest daughter was tired (and found not-guilty) of murder, it was he, who saw to the courtroom, to help prove her innocence. In the aftermath, she and he dated for four years, parting only when her family was to move to California. He had heard she died in the September eleventh plane crashes, a passenger on the flight to crash land in the Pennsylvanian countryside. It was only when she wrote him, two months later, he having already attended memorial services for her, he having already resigned himself to the fact that she was dead, did he learn she still lived, did he wonder of Immortality, did he join the Watchers. It was there he met Adam Pierson for the second time; it was there he first met Joe Dawson.  
  
He was a researcher first. For his first six months, he worked on the chronicles of Amanda, attempting to puzzle together the centuries of her early life, attempting to discover the secret of the stone she carried. It was from there, he first learned of Duncan MacLeod, of Richie Ryan. (Hence, his little mission asked from Adam Pierson was only slightly ironic). When Nick Wolfe first became an Immortal, late two thousand two, he was assigned to be the primary watcher, as both lived in New York, crossed on occasion the same social circles, and both had no intention of leaving the largest American city. Or, at least, that was until he arrived in Paris, and he found Asher alive, well, and happier than he had seen her before.  
  
He had returned to the states only briefly, convinced the Watcher board to let him transfer to Paris, convinced them to assign him to Asher Jacobs. He had his own theories on Immortality. He was meticulous in his research, giving special time to the topics, which interested him, the most. Joe Dawson had called him on it, threatened to straighten his priorities -Joe Dawson had not lived past September of two thousand and three.  
  
Asher, in the early months of their relationship, had once described him as 'power-hungry, manipulative, bitter, revengeful.' "So, if I am seemingly so false, why take the chance on me?" he had asked. To which, she had shrugged, and responded, "Call it a last stake on reformed adolescent rebellion."  
  
But her words were petty, plain, and appropriate until spoken out loud. Once said, the words lost all flavor, and had no harmful effect against him, for he knew them to be true. More so, since he had seen Asher alive in the Paris bar, obviously in love with Richie Ryan, obviously happy in the post-Death life she had created for herself. So, he returned to her her sword, an object he had held since she left UCLA, an object he always swore he would one day return to her, in hope, to force her to use it upon herself. But, of course, at their meeting under the arch, he had failed to mention that bit of information.  
  
And, here he was again. Left Paris in April, only to return again in June, under the private guise of Asher Jacob's watcher, under the public guise of a lawyer currently struggling to build his own firm. Should anyone ask what law he practiced, he simply smiled, responding he still had no preference, that he would take the cases as they came.  
  
Trans-Atlantic flights had always provided him ample time to think. He knew some preferred to sort thoughts while showering, others standing on the bridge between sleep and awake, others found the calming process of washing dishes or doing housework to be the perfect opportunity, others preferred to walk or to drive or to run, but he had always thought best when he thirty-thousand feet above the ground. He would stare out the windows, watching the clouds, watching the doll-house quality of the civilizations below, wondering what it would have been like to see those civilizations first fall, only to rise again. Life, in that respect, was like the phoenix, always managing to rise again from the ash.  
  
He was no exception. 


End file.
